Japanese Ambassador Ryuichiro Yamazaki has informed the Supreme Court of Japan’s approval of the official development assistance (ODA) grant for the "Construction and Equipping of the Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA) Development Center."
Yamazaki stressed that the building of the training facilities will eventually benefit the entire Filipino nation by allowing more efficient administration of justice.
The P300-million ODA grant is part of the total project cost of more than P525 million under the Fourth and Fifth Non-Project Grant Assistance Counter-value Fund.
The money will enable the Supreme Court to construct additional training facilities and expand PHILJA’s existing training site in Tagaytay City.
The proposed PHILJA Development Center will directly benefit about 70,944 justices, judges, court personnel and lawyers.
The PHILJA is the education arm of the Supreme Court and the sole judicial training institute in the Philippines.
Earlier, the Supreme Court requested assistance from the Japanese government to upgrade the PHILJA facilities.
The Supreme Court lamented the PHILJA facilities are presently inadequate to achieve its present mission.
In financing the project, the Japanese government exemplifies its support to the Philippine government’s efforts aimed at strengthening the functions of its judicial branch.
As enunciated in the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP), improving the judicial branch is one of the Philippine government’s major concerns in achieving the objectives of its reform program, which is being supported by the Philippine judiciary through its own Action Program for Judicial Reform (APJR).
"Judicial education being the foundation of judicial reform, this project will boost the efforts (to) significantly contribute to addressing the issues of governance and establishment of a fair and just society," the embassy said.
"It is significant that this project... will highlight the important role of the judiciary in fostering economic growth and development," it added.